Amerika no Seikatsu
by tInTiNthenut
Summary: Short drabbles on Ryu's life when he was studying in America.
1. I'll miss you

**Disclaimer: I do not own DDS. Sadly. **

Hades, his white hair standing out starkly against the dark of the room, turned to look at the eleven-year old before him. His grandson. Blue bangs framing the pale heart-shaped face, dark inquisitive eyes straining to see him by the light from the small window. Freshly graduated from elementary school, top of the grade. He hadn't even changed out of his school uniform.

Hades finally acknowledged the boy's presence. "Ryu-kun."

The boy's face brightened. "Oji-san! Genki-desu?"

"Hai, Genki-desu." Hades responded. He sank into his customary armchair. How was he to tell Ryu the news? He would probably take it well; the boy always took news well. But such drastic change…for the first time since he took up his reign as head of Meiousei, Hades wondered if he was making the correct decision, in allowing him to go…

But perhaps the exposure would be good for him. He would be able to cope easily, that was no problem. Ryu was bright-exceptionally bright. The syllabus would pose no problem for him. But what if he came back with all the wrong American ideals? What if he changed, through exposure to the Americans? What if…

Hades shook his head. Baka! Ryu would be perfectly fine in America.

"Oji-san?" Ryu cocked his head questioningly at his grandfather, deep in contemplation.

Hades took a deep breath. It was now or never.

"Ryu-kun…" he began. "I have decided…to send you to America."

"Oji-san?" Ryu stared in shock. "America! Tou-ii desu ne…"

"Yes, I know it's far." Hades sighed. "But the exposure will be good for you. Get you away from Tokyo for a while. You need to know a world outside Japan, Ryu-kun."

"Hai, Oji-san." Ryu nodded obediently.

"Miss Yurie will accompany you," Hades continued. "Begin packing; your plane leaves in two days. Miss Yurie will tell you what to pack."

"Hai."

"You will attend a normal middle-school there, and you shall have to learn English there. No more tutors for you. You understand?"

"Hai."

Hades stood again. "I won't see you again for a very long time, Ryu. Two years, three years even. Take care of yourself."

"Hai."

Hades sank into his chair and swiveled it away from the door. He could hear the light footsteps pattering away. Then…they returned.

_Oomph!_

The eleven-year old embraced him tightly, then slowly stepped back, hesitating, as if awaiting some sort of punishment for this frivolity. Hades' eyes widened. He was completely taken aback, and simultaneously rendered speechless. He and Ryu-kun had never shown any form of emotions towards each other. And now here was the boy hugging him.

When no fits of rage ensued, Ryu silently slipped away. "Sayonara, Oji-san…"

Hades stared after the retreating figure.

"I'll miss you."

**Author's Note: So tell me, did that really suck, or what? Yes, i know Hades is so OOC. Grr. Should i expand this fic? Flames are accepted, just REVIEW! Swings Pluto watch at readers You will review...**


	2. Prejudice

Chapter 1

"Attention, all passengers. We will begin to descend in a few minutes. Please return to your seats and strap on your safety-belts. I repeat, please return to your seat and strap on your safety-belt. We will be landing in New York shortly."

Ryu shut his book as the green safety-belt icon before him winked on. Reading during take-off and landing always made him ill. As the plane descended, he instead looked out of the window. New York was a concrete jungle—filled with towering skyscrapers and other buildings. He could vaguely make out a traffic jam on one of the roads. Eight o'clock, New York. People were heading to work. Just like Tokyo. Where was the exposure?

Miss Yurie returned and strapped herself in. She had been prowling the aisles from the moment she was allowed out of her seat, for reasons unknown. "Don't worry, Master Ryu," she comforted, mistaking his silence for homesickness. "New York is a wonderful city, I'm sure you'll adapt quickly."

* * *

"Right this way then, Amakusa."

The school secretary led Ryu down the hall towards his new class. So far, he understood little of what she said, but he took it that she wanted him to follow her, mainly based on the rather obvious sign language she was flashing at him. She must have thought he was a mute.

"Mrs. Clapham, the new student Amakusa Ryu."

A stout lady dressed in a violent shade of pink, glasses perched tremulously on her beak-like protuberance of a nose. Mrs. Clapham peered at Ryu. "Amakusa, huh? You look rather small…"

Ryu had absolutely no clue what she was saying. Why in goodness sake hadn't he bothered learning some English on the _hikouki_?

"Class, meet your new classmate Amakusa Ryu." Mrs. Clapham directed Ryu to an empty seat, then sat down, absorbed in test papers. Why weren't there any _jyuu-gyou _being conducted? Was this the way American schools were run?

Next to him was a pale, fair-haired boy, nose jutting out like a crow's beak. "Yo. I'm Ryan Cresteas. Call me Ry."

"Shut up, Ry. Can't you see the poor boy's struck dumb with fright?" Beside Ryan, a young girl's long brown hair draped over Ryan's desk as she leaned across. "I'm Maria. Ignore Ry, he's an idiot."

Completely at a loss, Ryu stared back at them. "Eh…Watashi wa Ryu desu. Douzoyoroshiku."

"Erm…?"

"Yo, man, whaddya heck are you talking, Chinese? Speak English, pal. Or can't you?"

Ryu stared in consternation.

"I don't think he does. Mrs. Clapham said his name was Amakusa. That sounds foreign. Maybe…" Maria skipped out from her seat and sat on Ryu's desk. "Amakusa, hablar espanol?"

Ryu shook his head. "Usare la italiano?"

Shake.

"Sprechen sie Deutsch?"

Shake.

Maria was getting impatient.

"Chiang-kek! Get your butt over here!"

A tall, gangly Asian kid crossed the large classroom. "What, Maria?"

Maria pointed at Ryu. "Get this guy to talk. He doesn't speak English. Or Spanish, or Italian, or German…"

"OK, OK." Chiang-kek bent down to Ryu's height, accidentally allowing his unruly mop of black hair to get in Ryu's face. "Ni hao?"

Ryu shook his head again, flinging Chiang-kek's raven strands off him.

"Vanakkam?"

Shake.

"Sawaddikap?"

Still shake.

Chiang-kek sighed. "No can do, folks. For all we know this guy's probably a mute freak."

* * *

"Master Ryu, won't you come down for dinner?"

"No. I'm not hungry."

Holed up in his room, Ryu carefully highlighted and underlined English phrases he felt would be useful in school the following day. If he couldn't pick up English in America, then he'd force himself to learn it.

* * *

"Yo, Amakusa. You still speaking that alien language?"

"My…name is…Amakusa Ryu…" Ryu stammered, trying desperately to recall his studies the night before. Why, oh why didn't Japanese elementary schools teach English?

"Whoa! You actually speak!"

"Call me Ryu…"

"Ya like to be called by your surname?"

Ryu stared. He could vaguely understand what Ryan meant, but what was a surname? He dove for his English-Japanese dictionary.

"My name is Ryu. My surname is Amakusa." Now how did he manage to string together a coherent sentence like that?

"OK, Ryu Amakusa. Then where d'ya come from? Some remote island in the Caribbean? I've never met someone who can't speak English before."

"I'm from Japan." Ry's eyes suddenly widened. He propelled himself away from his desk, pushing so hard his chair clattered to the ground and he fell on his backside.

"Stay away from me, man."

"Ah…?"

"I said, stay away from me! Understand? No crappy Jap's gonna come near me."

Ryu had no time to translate Ryan's words, for Mrs. Clapham walked in at the moment. But he got the gist

* * *

Mr. Deverenz, the algebra teacher, started the day off by introducing the class to the world of x.

"The thing is, class. Most people think algebra is boring. Why? Because they don't understand it." Mr. Deverenz placed his hands on the table, and stared reproachfully at the class. "They can't _appreciate_ algebra. They have no sense of what it is to _be_ algebra." Panting heavily, nostrils dilating, he glared until his glasses slipped down his sweaty nose. The very climax of his speech. "And THAT," he roared, "IS WHY YOU STUDENTS KEEP FAILING IT EVERY YEAR! You need to beFRIEND algebra! Familiarize yourself with it! Know it INSIDE OUT! Exercise books out, everyone! Grasp this wonderful opportunity to make friends with the most fantastic, mysterious mathematical concept ever! ALGEBRA! GET TO WORK! I want to see these problems done by the time the bell has rung. Now GETONWITHIT!"

Mr. Deverenz scribbled ten problems on the board, then sat down, tilted his head back and drank deeply from a thermos, breathing slowly.

Sums, sums and more sums… Ryu took out his exercise book and copied the problems out laboriously. Hmm. Expand x(5y-7x+2). Simple. His brain supplying the answer effortlessly, he immediately scribbled down 5xy-7x2+2x. Question 2…Well, at least mathematics was a universal language he understood.

A mere ten minutes later, he laid down his pencil, satisfied. Chikusho! Half an hour to the end of the lesson! What was he supposed to do until then?

Most of the class were not concentrating on the sums; they hadn't even bothered to take out their exercise books. Majority of them had failed this course the year before. Whispering, chit-chatting and gossiping, most of them. All staring at him, pointing, speaking in low voices. Moving further away from him, still staring, some glaring. Ryu suddenly noticed a crumpled ball of paper on his desk. Opening up the note, the capital letters jumped out at him and whacked him in the gut like a baseball bat. Scribbled on the ledger lines of the math exercise book in black marker were just a few sentences, but each of them were worse than a shot in the head.

'BLAST YOU, BLOODY JAP. ARROGANT SHIT. GO JUMP IN A LAKE.'

* * *

A/N: ookay... 0.0 this chapter was kinda weird. sorry for the coarse language... pls R & R! and sorry for the long time i took to post. 


	3. Going Home

Disclaimer: I do not own TGQ. It belongs to Amagi Seimaru and Satou Fumiya.

A/N: Last one! (cos i'm too lazy, and work is catching up. and i want to work on Romeo and Juliet.) There'll be an epilogue, i'm posting after this.

Chapter 2

Ryu pushed his way through the chattering crowd, ignoring the whispers, the giggles, the points and nudges. He'd become used to them by now.

Ryu Amakusa (or Amakusa Ryu as he liked to think) had finished top of the honour roll. Again. Just like last year, and the year before. And the youngest person ever to do so, at thirteen amongst eighteen-year-olds. The youngest high-school senior. It bothered him.

Proceeding quickly, he had found himself skipping grades every year. At thirteen, he was graduating from high school with top honours. Teachers thought he was brilliant genius; others, just a plain weirdo with blue hair (whatever possessed the gods to give him blue hair!), teacher's pet. Why should he be bothered? Certainly not by what his classmates thought of him.

Whatever was he going to do next? College? He couldn't possibly start work at the age of… (according to his calculations, college would take about 4 years…) seventeen! Or could he? Would the college staff even take him in?

Perhaps Oji-san would take him back to Japan. The 'two or three years' were almost up.

Would he ever return to Japan?

WHACK. Laughter filled the air as Ryu, immersed in his thoughts, slammed face-first into the wall. And a bright, gaudy (HOT PINK!) poster.

COME TO THE FAREWELL DANCE.

Ryu wasn't planning on going. He had never gone. But now…graduating from school, people EXPECTED him to go. He wasn't going to go.

Giggling girls, thinking that going out with a thirteen-year-old kid was cute, had asked him out, only to be turned down (they were quite disappointed, which was queer. Who would really want to go out with a blue-haired freak?). No loss, except perhaps to their ego. Certainly not to Ryu's. He never expected anyone to ask him, much less go.

He went home.

* * *

"Okaerinasai, Ryu-sama."

"Yurie-san."

"Hai?"

"There's no need to prepare dinner for me tonight. I'm not hungry."

"By the way, Ryu-sama, there's a letter for you. And I heard about the honour roll. Congratulations." Ryu paused, bedroom door half open.

"Mmm."

* * *

Ryu collapsed on the bed, ripping open the top of the envelope.

MASSACHUSSETS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)

DEAR RYU AMAKUSA:

Every year the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) hands out a certain limited number of scholarships to students who have shown a particular interest or great talent in science and technology.

Thus, we are pleased to inform you that we have set aside a place for you in our institute. Your record has been exemplary, nothing short of genius.

We hope that you will accept this scholarship, and reply to this letter by the fifteenth of May. Thank you.

Superintendent

William Hargreaves

Ryu turned off the light, and turned, facedown in his pillow. Great way to add to his insomnia, MIT. At this point he could barely sleep three hours per night, and now right beside his slowly increasing desire to return to _nihon_ was this brilliant letter. Perfect. At this rate, he wouldn't be getting any sleep at all.

Nihon… 

He missed speaking _nihongou. _Although he spoke it regularly and kept to Japanese customs with Yurie-san, however it just wasn't the same as being in Japan.

It had been two and a half years since he last intermixed Japanese words with his English.

And he had begun to do so again.

To go or not to go… 

Great. Now he was thinking Hamlet. Only after the Literature paper was over, of course.

MIT…nihon…MIT…nihon…MIT…nihon…MITnihonMITnihonMITNIHON… 

Had he gone insane?

Ryu flipped around to stare at the ceiling. When he had first arrived, he had placed a world map on the ceiling. A small glow-in-the-dark star was pasted right where Tokyo was. With the light off, all he could see was the star. He watched, as the star gradually went from being brightly illuminated, to a faint glow superimposed on the ceiling. Like his dreams of returning.

MIT or nihon? 

If he went to MIT, he would please _oji-san_. But if he declined, perhaps _oji-san_ would think he had failed and bring him back.

Fat chance of that ever happening. By this time he'd probably already know of the invitation, knowing Yurie-san.

Then the phone downstairs rang, and he could hear faint strains of Yurie-san's conversation. "Hai, Kelbros-san."

Ah, _oji-san _just made the decision for him.

* * *

"Heard _somebody_ got into the MIT, huh."

"A certain **_honourable _**person."

"On a **_roll_**, don't'cha think?"

The crowd of guys at the locker room shouldered Ryu aside, making sure they were talking just loud enough for him to hear.

Being slight of weight and absolutely no match for the burly rugby team members, Ryu stumbled to one side, caught himself at the lockers and examined the ugly bruise on his arm. Nothing too much to worry about.

* * *

He helped a little girl on the way home.

Not like it was something he usually did.

But she spoke Japanese, which attracted him to her instantly.

Thank God he managed to find her house, and that she actually knew her address.

"Arigatou, Ryu-kun!" 

Her excited, high-pitched voice intermixed with her mother's profuse thanks in Japanese still filled his mind. The beauty of _nihongou._

* * *

Helped solve another case today…

His third one, wasn't it?

Relatively simple, or so it appeared to him.

He had absolutely no clue why the _keisatsu _found it tough to figure; but he somewhat enjoyed what he did.

Stopping by the station to converse with the policemen, picking out fallacies in alibis, picking apart the human behaviour. Was that a strange hobby for a thirteen-almost-fourteen-year-old?

He should really consider a career as a detective, or a policeman. Perhaps then it wouldn't look so queer. He could've sworn people were giving him strange looks that day.

* * *

MASSACHUSSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)

DEAR RYU AMAKUSA:

We are sorry to hear that you have declined our offer of a scholarship to our institute. Should you change your mind, the offer is still available.

Thank you

Superintendent

William Hargreaves.

* * *

"Ryu-sama! We're going to be late! Hurry up!"

Ryu had just finished taking down the map. Jumping down from the stool, he rolled it up and stuffed it in his suitcase. He padded downstairs in his bare socks, and pulled on his sneakers once outside with practiced ease. He hefted the suitcase in one hand, and in the other the letter from MIT, which had just arrived. As Yurie-san attempted to hail a taxi (for once she had forgotten to call one) he crushed the letter into a ball and threw it into the bin. He would leave everything behind.

Leave everything behind, and start afresh in Japan. _Oji-san _said he had plans for Ryu-kun in Japan. Not Ryu Amakusa, but Amakusa Ryu.

He was going home.

A/N: YAY IT'S DONE IT'S DONE IT'S DONE! it may not seem like much but i spent most of my holidays doing this! Love muchly to all guys who reviewed, (esp lorraine and natsu!)


	4. Are You Ready?

Disclaimer: I don't own TGQ. They belong to Amagi Seimaru and Satou Fumiya.

A/N: I KNOW i said in the last chapter that it was the end, but i couldnt resist adding an epilogue. XD i had this all written out previously last year, when i began the fic, and i couldnt decide whether to ditch or not. and it's mainly based on that scene in the manga book 20. if you go trawl through you'll find a tiny snippet of Hades talking to Ryu about his new "assignment". So i knewknewknew that this ficcie had to end with this. couldn't help it.

Just fourteen and fresh from his studies in New York, Ryu stood before Hades. Hades scrutinized him slowly. There wasn't much difference between this teen and the boy three years ago, physically. Same pale, heart-shaped face. Same large, dark eyes, the same long blue bangs covering his face.

But he had matured. You could tell. He no longer absorbed your every single word like a sponge and kept it like that, but rather took it in, chewed on it, and then decided for himself whether it was true or not. Rather like a tiger, no, cunning dragon, attempting to decide whether that snake over there would be its next meal, or its imminent death.

Ryu WAS the dragon.

Hades now knew Ryu would do excellently on his next task.

"Ryu-kun. Ogenki desu ka?"

"Hai. Ogenki desu." The reply was respectful, yet full of caution. No longer the carefree voice of the boy who hugged him three years before.

Hades turned towards the window. "Ryu, I have an important job for you."

"Hai?"

"I suppose you have heard of DDS?"

"…DDS…?"

"Yes. The Dan Detective School. You've heard, I suppose? A school Morihiko Dan set up to cultivate budding detectives and to eventually, find his successor."

"Of course. There are many officers in New York who are alma maters of DDS."

"Well then you do know that this year, the batch of people taken into DDS will be placed in a Special Class, known as Class Q. I want you to join that class."

"Are you sure that I will get in? Sir?"

"With your intellect, Ryu-kun, I am certain. Your little detective work did not go unnoticed." For the first time, Ryu showed some sign of emotion. He started, and took a step backwards. "Your task is to mix around and find out as much about DDS as possible. This is my next task for you…"

Hades turned from the windows to face Ryu, smiling. Not a cheerful smile, nor a warm one, of comfort, but an emotionless smile. Almost cruel. He could see Ryu suppress a shiver. Good, he still had the power over the boy. And he had to appear that he had, even if he didn't.

"Are you ready?"

Ryu nodded wordlessly, then bowed quickly, spun on his heel and walked out the door. "I am ready."

And Hades believed that he was.

A/N: YAY I LOVE ALL WHO REVIEWED thanks for supporting me (though i took a stupidly long time to update) and this is my first ever complete story on applauds ok! (AND FOR POKEMON FANS... I'M WORKING ON IT. I'M WORKING ON IT!)


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